From Pickleball to Arcade Games, New Social Hotspots Emerge

When Pickle & Taps, an indoor pickleball venue, opens later this month, the facility will offer a range of craft beer and wine in addition to pickleball play.

Owners Jason and Kayse Beasley are putting the finishing touches on the 10-court indoor pickleball venue at 1207 S. 13th St. Since May, the couple has been working to convert a 30,000-square-foot space, formerly occupied by Queensboro shirt company, into the pickleball venue.

The Beasleys began playing pickleball in March 2023 and fell in love with the sport. They soon realized there wasn’t an indoor pickleball facility in the city, so they decided to create one. They eventually found the building on 13th Street and signed a lease in May.

Once in the new space, it needed a “good bit of demo,” Jason Beasley said. That included removing the existing flooring and painting the ceilings, but they’ve put most of their energy into the facility’s new floors and the fences that divide the courts.

One of the owners’ last steps is finishing a small bar in the venue. They’re working to secure the state-issued license needed to serve beer and wine and have started fielding input on the venue’s craft beer selection on the business’s social media pages.

They decided to sell beer and wine to help create a social atmosphere where players can hang out before or after games.

“We want to build a place for people to come and compete and also to get better,” Kayse Beasley said, “but we also wanted to tap into the social piece of it.”

But the Beasleys said they don’t want the beer and wine to overshadow their pickleball focus.

“At the end of the day, we don’t want to be a bar,” Kayse Beasley said. “We want to be pickleball with a few social drinks.”

Pickle & Taps isn’t the only business in the Wilmington area pairing drinks with social activities. The Good Lie, a bar with nine holes of indoor mini-golf, held its grand opening in late September at 603 Castle St. The business hosts a mini-golf league and tournaments and offers a full bar.

In mid-October, Rally Point Bar and Arcade, located at 214 Walnut St., celebrated its first anniversary downtown. The business features various new and classic arcade-style games, including Skee-Ball, Pong, air hockey, basketball, Pac-Man and more. Rally Point hosts regular competition nights and offers customers a full bar and a rotating food truck schedule.

These Wilmington businesses tap into the growing popularity of social entertainment venues, which have popped up in cities nationwide. Whether featuring pickleball, mini golf or arcade games, the Wilmington venues all aim to highlight the social aspects of a bar.

“Rally Point is a place where people come together and have fun with some friendly competition,” Kevin Ullman, who owns Rally Point with friend and business partner, Andrew Hargrove, told the Business Journal last year. “People can come with their friends, or they can bring their kids and have some fun with them and make some memories.”